3 Questions to Ask – and Answer – When Launching a Twitter Chat
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As founder of the #measurePR Twitter chat, I was invited to, and participated in, #chatmixer last night (party image, David Domingo, Creative Commons).
The idea was to bring together folks who routinely participate in specific chats, in an online/Twitter “mixer,” in an effort to widen their Twitter circles (would that be Twircles?) – hence the choice of #chatmixer as a hashtag. Truth be told, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, though Justin Goldsborough, Heather Whaling and Valerie Simon were meticulous in their planning.
Turns out, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. It had a great party feel to it, and the last time I can remember the feeling of Twitter being such a party solely due to an effort like this (i.e. not related to an offline event) was the “kindness party” last year. I don’t even remember who organized that, except that Kim Wells brought it to my attention, and I had a whale of a time.
A chat is born
Anyhoo… during the course of #chatmixer, a new chat was born: #cookchat. (I cannot wait for that one.) And a few different people mentioned they were interested in starting chats as well.
This can be a very smart thing to do, especially from a marketing point of view.
But as with all bright ideas, you should play devil’s advocate and batter the heck out of your bright idea before you launch it. Better you find the holes in it & mend them before anyone else does, right?
First, read these excellent posts on participating in (by Jeff Hurt) and running (by David Spinks) a Twitterchat.
Now, just as when designing a PR strategy, here are three questions to ask – and answer – when launching a Twitter chat.
1. What gap will this chat help to fill?
If you look at What the Hashtag?! (now part of What the Trend™), you’ll see it’s currently tracking 9,900 hashtags. While not all of those are chats, that gives you a sense of just how many hashtags are out there.
Image: skipnclick’s Flickrstream, Creative Commons
The primary reasons people participate in chats are, first, to learn something and second, to extend their networks. So if your chat is to be successful, it must fulfill these two desires.
If you look at this handy-dandy spreadsheet that Robert Swanwick created to track regular chats on Twitter, you’ll see a few chats that are fairly similar, as well as those that are quite unique.
There’s certainly nothing wrong in several people having the same conversation, albeit with different hashtags – it happens all the time. But if you want to give your chat a shot at succeeding (more on what this means in a bit), try to make it unique.
This is what Sarah Evans did with #journchat, what Kellye Crane did with #soloPR and, I’d like to think, what I’m doing with #measurePR.
What do the people you want to reach want to talk about? If you can answer that question – particularly with an answer that no one else has come up with yet – you’re off to a good start.
2. What will make this chat attract its target audience?
The quality of a chat – which is what will determine the perception of the chat and hence its profile – is dependent on who participates. You can design a great chat, but if you don’t have engaged, thoughtful and thought-provoking participants, it might end up being a one-hit wonder.
How do you bring the right people to the table?
Figure out what time of day and how often you’re going to hold the chat (this is particularly important if yours is not the only chat of its kind around)… and sustain it. Don’t set yourself up for failure; if your other commitments preclude a weekly chat, make it bi-weekly (or monthly, if you dare).
Whatever you decide, be consistent, since that is what will build your audience and community.
What you’re essentially asking people to do, as you build your chat community, is give up something else – work, family time, a movie, pizza – to devote their attention to your chat. Over and over and over again.
So make it easy and desirable for them to attend – that will go a long way in making it worth their while.
3. How will this chat become recognizable and identifiable?
Let’s face it, we in the social media sphere have the attention span of gnats. And I say that with no disrespect to gnats (image, Kaptain Kobold’s Flickrstream, Creative Commons).
Like anything else in the branding space, repetition rules. So once you’ve figured out the name and aim of your chat, brand it well.
I’d go so far as to say, message the heck out of it.
Choose a smart, easy-to-remember hashtag that’s as short as possible; you want to make the most of those 140 characters of Twitter-estate. Register it on WTHashtag and add it to your bio.
Brand your chat frequently, but consistently. Because if you don’t, someone else might, and that will leave you considerably unhappy.
Which brings me to success – what does a successful Twitter chat look like?
It could be the dominant player in its niche with thousands of participants; it could be an extremely engaged conversation that leads to genuine discovery for a small but passionate group.
It could be the place where thought leaders in your field congregate; it could be people pitching you to be “on your show”; or it could be the generic use of your hashtag in conversations with a related theme.
Whatever the measure of success, you’re going to have to define it based on why you set out to build it… and if you really want to be successful, define this at the outset. I haven’t yet come across a Twitter chat that’s being sustained purely for fun, even if it was launched impulsively; if it builds, there’s a great deal of time and effort being put into it.
So figure out what you want to do with the chat, as well as what you want the chat to do for you (and it’s ok to want the chat to do something for you, that’s what business is about).
When you begin at the end, there’s a much greater likelihood you’ll get there.
What do you think, am I off the mark or on the money? If you’ve implemented successful tactics in launching and maintaining Twitter chats, please share them in the comments section below. All 9,900 hashtags (and growing) and I will thank you.
Of Cabbages and Kings and Measuring PR
We kicked off our first Twitterchat on measuring public relations yesterday, with the “queen of measurement” herself, Katie Paine. From 12-1 pm EST, we had an incredibly lively and vibrant discussion that surprised even me, the organizer – and I should know not to be surprised by anything on Twitter by now!
You might wonder why I borrowed from “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in titling this post. The thing is, Mr. Carroll’s poem is so full of beautiful whimsy, I can’t help but think it reflects some of the chaos we are still dealing with when it comes to measuring PR.
I write and speak often on this but really… why are we still going round and round in circles about something like AVE (ad value equivalency) which is essentially a measure of output when we know what’s really important to the C-suite is focusing on outcomes? Fortuitously, I stumbled across Pritesh Patel’s post on the subject of AVE as I was pulling this recap together, so do give it a read.
If I have one mantra when it comes to measurement – that’s it. Outcomes outcomes outcomes. Repeat after me: OUTCOMES.
But this recap isn’t (just) about me. So in that vein, here’s Sean Williams’ recap, which also looks at the AVE debate (or paroxysm, as he calls it). Below are some of the highlights of the chat, and you can find the entire transcript here.
The four questions posed were:
- What are the most common mistakes in measuring PR?
- How does a newbie get started in “smart” measurement?
- How has the PR measurement landscape changed over the years, or has it?
- Can you recommend some educational resources?
Here are just a few of the gems, and not just from Katie:
And those are just a few. I do hope you’ll read the transcript and share your thoughts via a comment below, or on Twitter using the #measurepr hashtag.
Katie – thank you so much for kicking off the inaugural #measurepr chat; I hope you’ll be back often as the featured guest!
A quick note on how we’ll proceed: these chats will take place every two weeks for now; if we see a great urge to increase (or decrease the frequency), we’ll do so, but for now, if you’re interested in PR measurement, do mark your calendars for the next one (February 16) from 12-1 pm ET, and every other Tuesday following.
And remember – we want to get your questions answered – so if you have questions you’d like to have discussed at a future chat, please email them to me at sburke (a) shonaliburke (dot) com – or, of course, you can always tweet me.
Until the next time – keep chatting and keep measuring!
More resources:
- The Institute for Public Relations has great resources on measurement
- I created a Twitter list of folks I think are leaders in measurement, so you might want to check them out
- As our featured guest, I think it’s only right to point you to Katie’s website and blog
- A presentation I made at PRSA09 on measurement, which may particularly help those of you at non-profits/with low or no budget
Image: Quinn Dombrowski, Creative Commons
Who’s Guilty of Tweet-itis?
Even for someone with a thin skin when it comes to micro-blogging and Twitter in particular, I thought this was laugh-out-loud hilarious.
Image: Mark Smiciklas, Creative Commons
Announcing #measurepr
I had a terrific time on Twitter today. Sean Williams organized a Twitterchat with Katie Paine and myself as a precursor to our respective visits to IABC/Cleveland, and we had a good old time chatting about measurement, PR, social media and the like.
You can read the entire transcript here, if you’re interested.
I sit in on quite a few chats every now and again and the one topic that always seems to come up is measurement. I figured a regular chat on measurement, especially as it pertains to public relations, might be worth setting up.
So I’ve created the #measurepr hashtag and hope that anyone who’s interested in discussing the ins and outs of PR measurement will join.
For now, we’re going to start with a bi-weekly chat, every other Tuesday from 12 – 1 pm ET. We’ll kick off the first one on February 2, and the esteemed queen of measurement, Katie Paine, will be our featured guest.
Do mark your calendars, and join me. If you have questions on PR measurement (which will encompass both “old” and “new” PR), drop me an email, leave a comment below, or tweet me. I’m looking forward to it!
Image: Creative Commons, Darren Hester’s Flickrstream
Tweetup… A Pocketful of Rainbows
I told you a couple of days ago about #shonalitweetup that’s being organized around PRSA2009. Now I’m really excited that we’ve added another layer to what I know is going to be a great evening and will, I hope, help an extremely worthy fund raising effort meet its goal.
We’ve partnered with 12for12K to help one of its charities, Musicians on Call. If you’re active in the social media world, you’re already familiar with 12for12K and Danny Brown, the brains and passion behind it. If you’re not, you can learn more here and here.
So, in a nutshell, if we all give a little, we’ll be able to help some extremely worthy causes. $12K per charity sounds like an awful lot, but not if we all chip in $10, $20, whatever we can (and companies, you should be giving more!). Little drops of water, little grains of sand, etc.
All the charities that have been selected for 12for12K are worthy causes. Even if we haven’t lived in a war zone, been excruciatingly hungry, or have been blessed with keeping our vision, we can identify with those who have/do, have been/are, and haven’t/can’t. If you haven’t been touched by these issues directly, you have been, in some way, shape or form, indirectly.
When it comes to music, though, there is not a single person who has not been touched by it directly. Remember how excited I was to visit Graceland, or listening to/watching Adam Lambert? In other words, the soundtrack of our lives.
So please help Danny and his team support Musicians on Call. Here are some ways in which you can do this:
1. If you’re coming to #shonalitweetup, consider chipping in. Yes, the tweetup is still sponsored, thanks to PRNewswire, Mike Smith Public Affairs and dna13 (that means hosted beverages and pie aka pizza for a limited time, so that we don’t drink Bar Basic out of house and home). And you don’t have to chip in – but it would be so nice if you would.
2. Whether you’re coming to the tweetup or not, share this post and/or the link to its 12for12K page with your networks; Facebook, Twitter, even email… you know the drill. Oh, and how about embedding the donation widget on your blog?
3. If you really think this is a good idea, put the squeeze on people you can ask directly to chip in.
You, my community, have been very good to me – from egging me on when I started this blog a whopping 11 months ago, to helping me find Darby the GSD a home. I hope I’ve been good for you in some way too. Now let’s all be good for 12for12K and Musicians On Call.
One other thing – and this is very important – just because the tweetup is tomorrow night, we’re not going to stop trying to help there. 12for12K runs through the end of the year… so we have a few weeks to help them reach their goal. Let’s do it!
Can we help some very worthwhile causes find their pockets full of rainbows?
As always, thank you from the bottom of my heart. (Psst, I downloaded MoC’s logo from their site, in case you want to do that as well).
Tweetupin’ a Storm in San Diego
Disclosure: no one’s asked me to write this post, and I’m sure not getting paid for it, but I do thank sponsors of a certain event coming up. Now that you know all that… read on.
I don’t know what’s gotten into everyone lately, it’s tweetup this, tweetup that… oh wait, it’s that whole thing about moving your online relationships offline. My bad.
So in a few days, when I head to San Diego for PRSA 2009, I have not one, not two, but four tweetups to try to attend… and three of them are on the same day. Wow. We PR people sure like to party.
The one I’m doing a shameless plug for, though, is #shonalitweetup. Yup, you read that right. Before you start throwing rotten eggs at me, I didn’t come up with the name (I’m not that egotistical… I don’t think…). Here’s how it happened:
When I knew I was going to be in San Diego for PRSA09, I wanted to make sure I’d be able to meet up with some of my friends. A certain Jen Wilbur (who appropriately uses @rockstarjen as her Twitter handle) took on the unappetizing task of organizing it and next thing I know – she christened it with my name.
Whoa! And – wow!
So the long and the short of it is that from being a small get-together for a few people, we now have a possible 33 folks converging on Bar Basic from 5 – 7 pm on Saturday, November 11, to guzzle, greet and grin together.
I’m really looking forward to catching up with @Natalie_Joy, @DowntownRob, @richandcreamy, @JenMitch, @vargasl and so many more, and meeting @EricLeist, @nicklucido, @tressalynne and many others for the first time.
I’m also psyched that PRNewsire, Mike Smith Public Affairs and dna13 have seen fit to sponsor this tweetup. I know I speak on behalf of the entire PR community (or at least the tweetup attendees) when I say, “Your generosity shall not go unnoticed… or unburped.”
If you’re attending the tweetup, get there early if you want to enjoy the hosted drinks and pizza before they run out. I’m told there’s seating for 12 (hey, we didn’t think this would get so big!), and after that it’s Squishing and/or SRO. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! Ditto if you’re a late RSVPer.
And please say “thank you” to our sponsors by leaving a comment below and/or giving them a shout out on Twitter (don’t forget to include the hashtag #shonalitweetup). Where would we be without them?
See you in San Diego! And I found this great photo of fireworks in Serithian’s Flickrstream.
Dilbert Talks Twitter
Hattip to Mark Sofman for pointing me to this.
Job Hunting? Give JobShouts a Holler
I came across JobShouts the way I seem to come across many new things these days: on Twitter. I’m not looking for a job (hey, my boss is very good to me), but I know many people who are, and for them, it’s definitely worth investigating.
According to its website, JobShouts is “no longer just a job board in the traditional sense,” but “a job search engine integrated with social media, helping to create connections and deliver better matching results for both employers and job seekers.”
Basically, you can search for jobs – and receive real-time postings – across multiple social networks with one click, which is a huge bonus for job seekers. Recently, it introduced a similar feature for those looking for candidates called Talent Search.
I thought this was a very smart use of social media, particularly Twitter, so I sat down virtually with Robin Eads, the co-founder, and asked her to tell me more about it.
Robin Eads & Michael Quale. (AKA @imjustagoyle & @tall_geek). Michael has 20+ years working in technology, with a strong focus on technology integration. I have more than 15 years of experience in IT/telecom staffing, business development, resume writing and career coaching.
What inspired you to do this?
As a user of job boards all through my staffing career, I knew that every year job boards got more expensive; and every year they delivered less quality and more restrictions. I was so fed up with job board results that I quit using them and resorted to using only my strong Boolean skills.
Late in 2008, after my second layoff that year, I decided to start my own recruiting and career consulting company. Demand wasn’t nearly as high for recruiting due to economic conditions and I found myself providing a lot of pro bono assistance to job seekers, mainly via Twitter. I felt Twitter was a great tool for interacting and receiving real time information.
That’s when the idea was born. Michael and I were discussing the need for a better job board; one that provided fresh information about real jobs, in real time. We discussed that the “pay to post” job boards would have to evolve with demand, which was rapidly moving away from that model. Michael came up with the name JobShouts when we talked about integrating with Twitter and it stuck.
We decided Twitter would be our first platform, since it was fastest way to receive information about jobs being posted. We liked that we could “tap in” to the API as a means to providing information more quickly. So JobShouts.com was born in January of 2009.
What can job seekers to do to optimize being found via JobShouts?
They can create a free (and private) user profile, that will allow them to receive notification via Direct Message on Twitter whenever a job is posted that matches their profile.
We’re working on a solution that will also allow them to choose how they receive that message (email, Facebook message, etc). For now, all job seekers that sign up for a profile must also have a Twitter account. However, they can set their Twitter DM settings to forward to their e-mail or phone so that they don’t have to monitor Twitter actively.
What PR and marketing efforts are you putting into JobShouts?
All PR and Marketing is home-grown, trial by fire. During my career I’ve had plenty of marketing experience including business development. The PR is all new and self taught, with the help of some great friends on Twitter. We’ve experienced a tremendous amount of support from some key industry people; namely Alison Doyle, Job Searching Guide from JobSearch.About.com. Her help and exposure landed us in the L.A. Times only 2 weeks after our launch!
Eight months later, we’ve been featured in the Baltimore Sun, New York Times, Tampa Tribune and on FOX-TV across the country. Most of this effort has been largely due to my own learning and relationship building. I write all of our press releases as well as our blog. I create and maintain relationships with people in PR, HR, Recruiting, News Media, etc and I pay attention and learn from them.
Our marketing plan is being refined as we currently take on the task of writing a formal business plan. JobShouts.com needs capital to continue to grow and pursue more innovation, so our business plan is crucial in developing investor interest.
How are you planning to measure success?
I think success has multiple levels. Personally, I consider what we’re doing as a success already – we’ve already done what the big job boards don’t do. We’ve already given recruiters, employers and job seekers a better and more cost effective resource.
As far as monetary success, there will be an enhanced set of features available to paid subscribers in the very near future. Some features will always remain free – but even the subscription costs will be reasonable. We strive never to be a Monster.com, so I suppose the ultimate success for us would be to us to eventually gain market share from them.
***
I imagine aggressive job seekers will be leery of focusing their efforts on just one service, but I do think JobShouts is worth a shot; if nothing else, for the time it can free up for them online, allowing them to focus on networking and relationship-building, which are still incredibly important, perhaps even more so today. (And if they’re still part of the “I don’t think Twitter’s much use” brigade, this might change their collective mind.) Their blog is fun to read as well, and if you’re not already doing so, follow them on Twitter here, here and here.
If you’ve been helped by JobShouts, would you let me know? How are you using social media in your job search? Do share by leaving a comment; successes and failures, we can learn from them all.
The Power of a Tweet
This is what Lance Armstrong can do with one tweet.
What can I/you/we do? Gets one thinking, doesn’t it.
Want to Freelance? TwitterSource
I had a lot of fun co-hosting the first #soloPR chat on Twitter today. It was a shame that my co-host, Heather Huhman, was locked out of Twitter for the duration, but pros like Kellye Crane, Jen Wilbur, and many more shared great tips on a career as a freelance PR professional, especially for new/recent grads. That’s right, I put “career” and “freelance” in the same sentence; because it can be a great one.
You can see the entire transcript of today’s chat at the #soloPR What the Hashtag?! page, but here are some gems from today’s chat:
It was great to meet new folks and reconnect with friends like Jennifer Mitchell, a feisty San Diego-based pro. Jen and I agreed to use the term “an agency of one” (which I first heard from her and promptly appropriated – with her permission – for my website earlier this year) on separate coasts. And Shane Kinkennon put me squarely in my place with a beautiful definition of “higher marketing”:
Many thanks to everyone who signed on today. I hope you’ll join the erstwhile Kellye Crane as she moves the #soloPR chat forward every Wednesday, from 1 – 2 pm ET. If today was anything to go by, we just tapped into an amazing resource.
You.
Do you have more tips you’d like to share on a career in freelance PR? Do leave a note in the comments, I’d love to know.
